


Peerless

by dimtraces



Series: The blue man [8]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bullying, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force-Sensitive Finn, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: FN-2187 really dislikes the refectory, especially now that his squad won’t talk to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Bullying, discussion of past child grooming.

“You know, they didn’t like me either,” the blue man says as he wedges himself onto the low corner bench next to FN-2187, who drops his ration bar in surprise.

The blue man isn’t usually here.

Well, strictly speaking, FN-2187 isn’t usually _here_ either, here being one of the empty benches that haven’t yet been moved out of the food room after the children from DX squadron got reassigned to another base. Normally, he sits on bench number Forn-2 section 40 with the rest of his squad. But this week he’s traded his assigned seating for the deserted benches, because it’s still better to anxiously wolf down his food—please, don’t let an officer come in and ask why he’d forego his rightful place among the other troopers—than to have the others continuously jostle him and try to make him drop his food (mostly Nines, though Slip often gets in a few hits as well). Once would have been an accident. Five times would have been understandable still, it’s hectic and crowded after all.

Thirty-eight times in three weeks, though? Not including the attempts to trip him during training and that terrifying moment when Zeroes had told Lieutenant Phasma—had _lied_ to Lieutenant Phasma—that FN-2187 had sabotaged the others’ blasters to make himself look better.

FN-2187 will gladly take the corner bench until they’ve calmed down, thank you.

He doesn’t even know what he _did_.

_(The simulation training session a month ago, when Zeroes had been temporarily assigned squad leader to ascertain whether there were team configurations more efficient than their default arrangement, and he had chosen to execute the simulated Bothan rebel cell leader in the market square. There had been anger and hundreds of weapons in the crowd, and they had only been four troopers, standing in an indefensible position. FN-2187 had warned Zeroes of the impending mutiny, and then he had wrestled the blaster out of his hands. Nines had spat in his face, after they’d left the simulation._

_Phasma holding them back after blaster practice five years ago. She had talked for a half-hour about FN-2187’s score on the officer aptitude test while his squad’s eyes had skewered his back._

_Their first dictation exercise when they were four, and FN-2187 had been the only one to get all the words correct in a painstakingly clean childish hand, and he had been so proud. The next sheet of flimsi had been ripped up before he could turn it in.)_

He says as much to the blue man, who sighs.

“Back then, I was new, a scrawny kid from the Outer Rim. Couldn’t read Basic, and of course no-one ever asked me about Huttese. I liked talking about machines, and my mom, and I couldn’t sit still like they wanted me to.” The blue man massages the knuckles of his flesh hand, lost in thought. “I wasn’t very good at what the other children could do, and yet I was already chosen by a master.” (The word isn’t tinged with hatred and bitterness, the way it usually is when the blue man spits it out. Just deep sadness.) “He told me they were just jealous, and I was being standoffish, and I should try harder. So I did. I fixed everything. Well, I couldn’t stop being their Chosen One, and I still struggled, but they couldn’t see it anymore. I was better. Better than everyone.

“They still didn’t like me. It didn’t work. I don’t think it _does_ work, giving your self away as a bribe like this. I do not think there is _anything_ wrong with you.”

It’s both a helpful answer and _not_. FN-2187 likes to do things. He figures out what’s suboptimal, and then he improves that until he’s the best version of himself that he can be. It's just what he  _does_. How else will he feel safe?

“Does it ever get better? Did you get a friend?”

The blue man draws his shoulders up and straightens his back, as close to standing at attention as he can get while sitting on a bench designed for people several heads shorter than him. (Sometimes when FN-2187 watches him, the usual laxness of his posture seems a deliberate decision: He will stand somewhere, feet a shoulder-width apart and arms crossed behind his back, and then he will blink and lean against the wall or curl up on a seat like a loth-cat, as if he’s only just remembered that that’s an option for him. As if being lacking in posture is a luxury—a _rebellion_. FN-2187 wonders if that is how he’ll be too, when he gets out.)

“I had a friend when I was young,” the blue man says, not looking at FN-2187. “I couldn’t see him all the time, he was an older man, very busy, but he made time for me. I could tell him everything. He didn’t judge me, and I would seek him out when I was scared or angry. He encouraged me— _it_.”

 _Like us_ , FN-2187 wants to crow. _It's you._ You’re _my friend_. But the expression on the blue man’s face stops him, more grimace than smile, and he doesn’t understand: Isn’t it good to have friends? FN-2187 has always wanted so badly not to be alone.

“There are certain similarities to our situation I had not considered before now, yes,” the blue man says, as if he had heard FN-2187.

_(There is a blood red room and an elderly man with kind eyes inside, and FN-2187 has never seen him before and he feels in his heart that he has been at the man’s side for decades. The man smiles when the buzz-cut boy sits down in the office. He smiles at the teenager bouncing his feet restlessly as he complains about cafeteria meals, and he puts a hand on a knee to stop the fidgeting. He smiles at the man, pacing and talking of war. He smiles when the man sinks down to his knees. He smiles when the droids sew the whimpering corpse back together. He smiles at the black figure cowering before him. He smiles. He smiles. He smiles.)_

“I would have been lost without my… friend. But I was lost _with_ him, you see? I was lonely and desperate, and he could see that. He knew he could use it. I love—loved him. I would have done anything he asked of me. I _did_ anything. I chose—I would not place the responsibility for my deeds on his… but I didn’t—I didn’t know I could choose—I was not told this, or maybe I was incapable of learning. I never understood. None of my masters wanted me to. It would have been…” He laughs, a quiet, wheezing sound, “—inconvenient.”

Shivering, FN-2187 leans closer to his friend.

“But I have been watching my son,” the blue man whispers quietly, reverently—urgently, as if it’s a secret, “I have been watching, and I think that… it is possible… even when someone is wiser than you, when their experience dwarfs yours, when they speak dire warnings and in their presence everything makes sense and you cannot argue your own point of view against them. You can still go away, and follow your own heart. You can make your own choice. Don’t listen to me. You’re right, I’m your only friend like he was mine, but I will never abandon you. Listen to _yourself_.”

FN-2187 smiles, at the slight contradiction in those words and at the way he hasn’t thought of his squad for minutes, but most of all at the desperate love encased in that confession. He would like to meet the son, he thinks.

The blue man wags a translucent durasteel finger. “For now though, young one, eat your lunch.” He points at the ration bar that’s been quietly floating between them, that FN-2187’s held up—apparently reflexively—with the force. “And well done.”

**Author's Note:**

> Things I learned writing this: English doesn't have a satisfactory idiom für "die Katze im Sack kaufen". There's _to buy a pig in a poke_ but I just don't Like it as much. What is a poke. I ended up cutting the line anyway, so it doesn't matter, but still.
> 
> This is probably The blue man being really unabashedly fix-it (not really in a situation way, but in an emotions way). This speech is not necessarily what Finn needs to hear (he's always had a much healthier relationship with agency, he mostly just needs someone to spend time with) but it's something Anakin needs to say. He's sixty plus years late, but better late than never.
> 
> The first part of this series has more than 100 kudos, I'm so happy that so many people like to read about Finn and Anakin hanging out. Also thank you to all the people who've written comments, I love you. I haven't written back to everyone yet but I will! I need time to think my answers through which is why I'm being so slow, and maybe you're also happy if I update?


End file.
